Ministry establishes number of shortcomings in e-health system and issues over 20 recommendations

  • 2017-01-20
  • BNS/TBT Staff

RIGA - The Environmental Protection and Regional Development Ministry has found a number of shortcomings in the e-health system's functionality and is offering the National Health Service more than twenty recommendations to improve the system's functionality, accessibility, and user-friendliness.

According to environmental Protection and Regional Development Minister Kaspars Gerhards, the e-health system has not yet achieved the objectives why it was created. "The main purpose for creating the e-health system was to improve the opportunities for residents to receive - and for physicians and pharmacists to provide - quality services," explains Gerhards, emphasizing that this objective has not yet been achieved.

The ministry has found that the information systems and e-services are only partly accessible to users. "The State Health Service has very little time to make the information systems and e-services, which at the moment of the inspection were not yet available, accessible to users," said Gerhards.

Once the project is completed, post-monitoring of the e-health system will continue for five years, added Gerhards.

According to the Environmental Protection and Regional Development Ministry, ensuring data exchange between the e-health system and information systems already being used by drugstores and hospitals is of crucial importance for the successful operation of the e-health system.

The ministry found during the inspection that at the end of 2016, only part of services of the e-health system was available to users: electronic prescriptions, sick leave certificates, electronic health card, the public section of the e-health portal, e-services on www.latvija.lv available to professionals, healthcare services classification system, statistical data. All other e-services that were to be available via the www.latvija.lv portal are still not available.